


Supply Run

by Lapsed_Scholar



Series: Family Stories [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, F/M, Family Fluff, Family Logistics, Humor, Periods, Teenage Embarrassment, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 06:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12006933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapsed_Scholar/pseuds/Lapsed_Scholar
Summary: Fatherhood and advanced family logistics





	Supply Run

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt (by txf-prompt-box) was leveled to write a story about Mulder buying tampons. I went a slightly different direction with it.
> 
> This story is dedicated to my own father who, with any luck, will never know that I wrote it.

_Georgia Aquarium_  
_Atlanta, GA_  
_August 6, 2008_  
_2:40 PM_

Although he had occasion to wish a number of things had gone differently in his life, Fox Mulder was generally very glad to be a man, whenever he had cause to think about it. From a physical perspective, watching Scully suffer through period cramps and the advanced stages of pregnancy had made him grateful that none of this was his lot. (He very wisely kept these observations to himself.) And from the non-physical perspective, he had seen Scully put up with enough misogynistic crap to be glad that he, by and large, didn’t have to worry about it, although he would occasionally intervene if he thought his input would strengthen her position, rather than weakening it.

This didn’t mean that he hadn’t come across a few situations when being a man was less convenient than being a woman, most of which were related to parenting. Being out without Scully caused random strangers to give him suspicious looks, as if he had stolen his children. As Emily had grown into a young woman, he realized that the two of them going anywhere together would cause a certain number of _even worse_ looks. His younger self would possibly have made a Woody Allen joke, but his older self found the prospect a bit too stomach-turning to joke about.

When the children were younger, bathrooms were a problem, since there were almost no changing facilities in men’s rooms, and figuring out where to take Emily was a needless adventure for all concerned. He opined on the bathroom problem to Scully a few times, usually following an unpleasant game of family logistics in a Target. She had given him a glare and told him that it was certainly unfair, but also that life wasn’t fair, and men generally had more than their fair share of fairness, when compared to women.

In retrospect, he probably should have looked at the calendar before complaining, although he wasn’t nearly stupid enough to voice that conclusion aloud.

By now, though, the bathroom problem had mostly solved itself. Emily, nearly fourteen, was more than happy to attend to all bathroom needs by herself. She was, in fact, heavily mortified by any suggestion to or by her parents that bathrooms were a thing that she ever needed, and she tended to try to confine her use of public facilities to times when Scully was not also using them.

It is necessary to re-emphasize, however: The bathroom problem had _mostly_ solved itself. Every so often (like now), something went awry, and Mulder found himself trying hard not to look incredibly creepy while being a man in his mid-forties who was keeping a surreptitious, worried eye on the door of the ladies’ restroom.

The impatient, squirmy seven year old currently sitting next to him added to the difficulty, but hopefully made him look less creepy.

Scully had a conference at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, and this had seemed like an excellent opportunity to take a family trip during the waning days of summer. And for the most part, it had been. During the day, Mulder, Emily, and Will had explored the Botanical Gardens, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, and now the Georgia Aquarium. When Scully was free, they sampled local restaurants, walked through parks, and took in a show at the Fox Theatre, which was almost worth all of the sly name puns he endured. (Very witty and original, his family. He gave his children long-suffering looks which they delighted in, but he got revenge on Scully by murmuring, very low and very close to her ear, that he would make her gasp his name in a very different tone as soon as they weren’t sharing a hotel room with two children. Her pale complexion made her blush stand out satisfyingly, even in the darkened theater.)

At this moment, in the Georgia Aquarium, however, there was no Scully, and there had also been no Emily for about twenty minutes now. Considering the aquarium wasn’t currently that busy, and there wasn’t a line out the door of the ladies’ room, twenty minutes was long enough to make him start to worry. Will was getting even more squirmy and impatient, tugging on his father’s hand and complaining about wanting to see more sharks, and Mulder was trying to work out more advanced family logistics with the kind of focus he previously used on FBI raids.

“Come on, Will,” he muttered in an undertone, taking a secure hold on his son’s hand, fixing his very best “Worried Father” look on his face, and walking towards the women’s restroom as if there was absolutely nothing strange about it.

“Dad?” inquired Will, confused, and also with minimal volume control. “Why’re we going to the _women’s_ bathroom? That’s the wrong one.”

Mulder winced a little and kept talking in an undertone. “I need to check on Emily, Will. I know it seems weird. When we get inside, I need you to be quiet, and stay near the door where I can see you.”

He gave a mental apology to the women of the Georgia Aquarium restroom, pulled open the door, and went a very short distance inside. The three ladies at the sink ceased their conversation to stare at him, but Mulder was more or less used to having that effect on people by now. He gave them an apologetic smile that he hoped was charming enough to make up for the fact that he was invading their bathroom.

“Em, honey? You OK?”

“Dad?” came a wavery voice from a stall. The women at the sink apparently decided that he passed muster as a Concerned Parent and went back to washing their hands. Mulder was less reassured, since Emily usually called him “Mulder” unless there were extenuating circumstances. Maybe an awkward situation in a public restroom with an audience of strangers was extenuating enough.

He let go of Will and gave him a stern look. “Stay by the door, got it?” Will nodded, eyes wide, subdued by the novelty of his surroundings.

Mulder made his way across the bathroom and parked himself along the wall by Emily’s stall. He kept Will in the corner of his eye, and spoke softly to Emily.

“Hey, Em. What’s wrong?”

Slight pause, then, “I’m OK, Dad.”

This was not terribly reassuring given her medical history. And he would really rather she didn’t emulate her mother’s peculiar reticence. “Sure you are.”

“I mean, I am, I just...” she broke off, apparently hoping that he would follow her stream of logic. But he didn’t quite have a handle on it yet.

“Just what?”

A sigh. An aggrieved sigh. He was apparently being dense.

“Emily?”

“I think it’s my period,” came the very quiet, rushed reply.

He blinked. Oh. That wasn’t so bad. He had been concocting horrifying health scenarios in his head. Her first one, though, and probably not an experience any teenage girl wanted to share with her father. He missed Scully on Emily’s behalf. “Do you feel sick?”

“My...abdomen hurts.”

“Your mother gives me to understand that’s normal. We’ll get you something for it.” He also missed Scully’s calm, objective, I-am-a-medical-doctor voice.

A beat.

“You OK to leave now, Em?” He was still watching Will out of the corner of his eye, and a few more women had come in and startled, first at Will by the door, and then at Mulder, standing in the middle of the room. At least his low conversation with a bathroom stall was apparently convincing enough that no one really gave him any attention beyond the initial double-take.

There was more miserable silence.

“Honey?”

“I also need...”

He was quicker on the uptake this time. “We can get those, too. I don’t have anything with me, and the vending machine in here looks pretty unlikely to vend anything. Uh, I’ve also learned from your mother that enough toilet paper can make a passable substitute in a pinch.” He did not, in fact, learn this from Scully, but he couldn’t quite remember how he knew it, and he figured Emily didn’t need precise sourcing in any case.

“...OK.”

“You need me for anything else?”

“No.”

“Then I’m going to stop shocking the fine ladies of the Georgia Aquarium and give you some privacy. I’ll be right outside.”

* * *

_A regular drug store_  
_Atlanta, GA_  
_August 6, 2008_  
_2:55 PM_

Will had put up a small fuss about leaving early, but Mulder had pulled him aside and explained that his sister wasn’t feeling well, and that he shouldn’t be mean about it. Will, generally empathetic, had nodded quietly. He had also asked Emily why she was sick, and Mulder had prepared himself to intervene if this was too embarrassing, but Emily had simply shrugged a little and said that her stomach hurt.

Now, however, in the menstrual supply aisle of the drug store, Emily looked a lot like she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her.

“What are we looking for?” asked Will, after they had been standing there for a bit.

“Medical supplies,” equivocated Mulder, who had already made quick work of grabbing ibuprofen and a heating pad. Will’s factual lesson on menstruation could wait for the moment when it wasn’t being given about and in front of his sister. And it would probably best be done by Scully using her I-am-a-medical-doctor voice.

“Mulder, why is this taking so long?” hissed Emily, apparently deciding that he’d been studying the options for an obscene amount of time. She was studiously not looking at the shelves.

Deciding “ _Because it’s been a long time since I’ve done this for anyone other than your mother, and you probably need different supplies than she does for reasons that I won’t get into here”_ would mortify Emily beyond repair, Mulder opted to give her a nonchalant shrug instead.

_(Reassessing options like this, he was reminded for a moment of the first time he had ever needed to study menstrual supplies, back in 1981. He had been dispatched, with virtually no guidance, by Phoebe, who, in retrospect, probably wanted to humiliate him on some level. She had sighed in disappointment at his selections and said, “It’s fortunate that you’re so gorgeous, Fox.”)_

Will returned from a trip further up the aisle holding a box of condoms. “What’s this?”

Mulder looked up from his perusal and did a double take. “Condoms. They’re for sex. Put them back, William, and stop pulling things off shelves.”

“Ew!” declared Will.

“Not everybody thinks so. But put them back now, please. And then stay here next to me.”

Emily moaned.

* * *

_A large and generally-clean hotel room_  
_Atlanta, GA_  
_August 6, 2008_  
_5:37 PM_

Dana Scully made her way quietly into the hotel room to look in on her daughter. Mulder had left a voicemail on her cell phone that everything was OK, but that she should look for him and Will at the hotel pool after she got out of her conference.

She had received a quiet, poolside summary of the day’s events from a dripping Mulder, while Will had bobbed happily and obliviously in the shallow end.

“You’re gonna have to explain periods to him, Scully.”

“I’ve explained worse.”

“And condoms.”

“We can wait until he either asks for details or gets a little older. And then I think that one’s your job.”

“Oh, fine. Just remember that everything I know about sex, I learned from porn.”

“That is not even remotely true.” She had tapped his bare chest gently and leaned close to add, in an even softer, breathy undertone, “ _Fox_.”

That had made him flush a little and squirm satisfyingly on his feet.

She had left her boys to their swimming (where, Mulder had emphasized, they were decidedly out of the way) and went to check on Emily, who she found propped up in bed with a heating pad, watching a show about elephants on Animal Planet.

Scully sat next to Emily on the bed. “Hi.”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Mulder told me about today. How are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling better. I think I’ll be OK to have dinner like normal.”

“That’s good. Do you have any questions for me; do you need anything else; or are there things you didn’t want to talk about with Mulder?”

“Not really. I think he...got everything.” Emily looked a little in awe of this fact.

“OK, sweetie. Just remember that I’m always here to answer any questions you have or talk about anything you need to talk about. And Mulder is, too.” Scully took her daughter’s hand briefly and gave it a squeeze, then settled in to learn more about elephants. Emily laid her head on her mother’s shoulder in a gesture of physical contact that was getting rarer these days.

After a few moments of companionable silence, “Mom?”

“Hmmm?”

“Well...how _did_ he know what to do and what to get?”

Scully smiled. “You mean Mulder? He’s lived in the world for quite awhile now, sweetie. Periods aren’t a strange, exotic mystery that he wouldn’t have encountered over forty-odd years. Although, even if they were, Mulder _does_ tend to seek out strange, exotic mysteries.”

Emily giggled.

“I would guess that a lot of his familiarity comes from his years with me—when you spend so much time with another person, you learn a lot about them, including things about how their bodies work.” She could sense Emily’s nose wrinkling a little, so she moved away from anatomical intimacy. “He also has a daughter, and when you have children, you start paying more attention to the parts of existence that affect them. And, as I said before, he would have gathered some degree of understanding simply by living in the world as long has he has. Sometimes you just learn things by a collection of passing experiences.”

“You’re saying it’s because he’s old?” And now Scully could hear the characteristic smirk of a daughter feeling better.

“Not _so_ old. But, yes, maybe a little.”

They lapsed back into comfortable silence. Then, “Thank him for me, Mom.”

“Of course, Emily.”


End file.
